


A London Werewolf in Sandford

by dr_tectonic



Category: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Genre: M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-30
Updated: 2008-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:31:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_tectonic/pseuds/dr_tectonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: see Title</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So who's this Officer Bobby fellow? In the movie, there's a police officer who shows up in the background at about the 34:39 mark. According to the UK commentary tracks, he's named "Bob", but I figured he would be called "Bobby" to distinguish him from PC Walker. You can see a screen-cap in [this post](http://community.livejournal.com/sandfordpolice/330867.html) showing that I'm not making this up. Anyway, Officer Bobby clearly needed to reprise his cameo in some fic. So you can blame that small part of this story on that post. As for the rest of it, I... really have no idea. If anybody can figure out what's wrong with my brain, please tell me.

**Title:** A London Werewolf in Sandford  
 **Fandom:** Hot Fuzz  
 **Author:** dr-tectonic  
 **Word Count:** 19,000+  (Peas. and. RICE!)  
 **Pairing:** NA/DB (some AC/AW)  
 **Rating:** R for depictions of sexuality, graphic injury, and attempted suicide. And fer cussin', of course.  
 **Warnings:** Pretends to be made of grim and angst; is actually made of crack and fluff.  
 ** ~~Disclaimer~~ Due Credit:** I wrote the words, but Wright, Pegg,  & Frost, et al, made the originals worth writing about.  
 **Summary:** see Title

  
 **Note:** So who's this Officer Bobby fellow? In the movie, there's a police officer who shows up in the background at about the 34:39 mark. According to the UK commentary tracks, he's named "Bob", but I figured he would be called "Bobby" to distinguish him from PC Walker. You can see a screen-cap in [this post](http://community.livejournal.com/sandfordpolice/330867.html) showing that I'm not making this up. Anyway, Officer Bobby clearly needed to reprise his cameo in some fic. So you can blame that small part of this story on that post. As for the rest of it, I... really have no idea. If anybody can figure out what's wrong with my brain, please tell me.

* * *

_Monday, June 26th  
4:30 pm_

In the eight weeks since their station house exploded, the Sandford Police Service had collectively managed to: get themselves healed up and released from the hospital in Buford Abbey, hand the bulk of the investigation and cleanup of the NWA case over to a special task force based in Bristol (after a suitably arduous and time-consuming series of briefings and depositions, of course), take some mandated vacation time for counseling and emotional recovery, and begin to get settled into their temporary digs in the old vacant bookshop a block off the main street.

What they had _not_ yet managed to do was make a measurable dent in the task of reconstructing a decade's worth of detonated records, figure out how to fit more than two people at a time into the storage closet that served as a locker room, scavenge enough mugs for everyone to drink tea at the same time (though the Turners had drawn up a detailed rota assigning mug-use periods and scheduled washings), or provide more than a token show of any actual, as it were, _policing_. Fortunately, that last turned out to be mostly unnecessary, as many years' worth of shadowy and conspiratorial terror were not to be thrown off overnight, and the good folk of Sandford turned out to be generally just that—good—and not inclined to much in the way of significant crime.

Of course, there were still plenty of other, uniquely Sandfordesque problems to solve, as today had demonstrated.

"I'm back," said Constable Danny Butterman, depositing a box of files on the corner of the table with a thud. "C'mon, this stuff can wait until tomorrow. Knock off work early and let's go to the pub."

Chief Inspector (Acting) Nicholas Angel thought for a moment. "Yeah, all right," he agreed, standing and stretching.

"Really? Eyyy!" Danny did a little victory clap. "I didn't think that would work."

"You would not _believe_ the day I have had."

Danny looked almost worried. "I didn't miss anything, did I?"

Nicholas made an impatient noise. "Not unless you'd be excited about A, getting cursed at by a caravan load of hippies, B, wading into Mrs. Lukechnios's ornamental fish-pond to rescue her cat, or C, lecturing the hoodies for tagging the tourists with spray paint again. Oh, and D, spending more than an _hour_ on the phone with one Inspector McManus of Scotland Yard for no reason at all."

"Is that the bloke who's been callin' for you all week? What did he want?

"Would you believe he's trying to open up a case from twenty-five years ago? Some American boy went missing in Crickadarn back in '81 and he wants to know if it might have been the NWA."

"That was _years_ before they started killin' people."

"He thought they might have been 'warming up'."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Where's Crickadarn, anyway? I've never even _heard_ of it. Can't be anywhere nearby."

"That's what _I_ said."

"Pfuh. City coppers."

"I know!"

Nicholas led the way into the tiny storage-closet-stroke-locker-room. Had they both been trying to change out of their uniforms at the same time, it would have been exceedingly cramped quarters. As it was, Danny was already in his civvies, and just followed Nicholas in there to continue the conversation. Or so they could claim, if anyone asked.

It had been a long enough day that Nicholas didn't even bother to neatly line up the seams on his trousers, instead just folding them roughly in half and flopping them onto his section of shelf. As he pulled his undershirt off over his head, it made a faint scraping sound against the stubble on his cheek.

He _tsk_ d at himself and checked his face in a little mirror hanging from a nail on the wall. "I could have sworn I shaved just yesterday morning." He generally only needed to shave every other day to keep his face smooth.

"That's all right. A bit of scruff's kinda nice. It makes you look prop'rly tough and heroic."

"It's damned unprofessional," said Nicholas.

"Naw," said Danny, leaning over to tap a finger against a darkened spot at the base of Angel's neck, " _that's_ unprofessional." He grinned, cheekily.

Nicholas flushed. Until he came to Sandford, he had thought of himself as straight, though if he were honest with himself (which he hadn't been very often, as it was so much easier just not to think about it), he would have admitted that he was probably "questioning". But it was amazing the shift in perspective that could result from events like your boss trying to have you murdered, your best friend taking a bullet for you, and a building blowing up around you. Sitting next to Danny's bed in the hospital, he realized that he felt different than he ever had before. Part of it was being medicated out of his gourd, of course, but it really didn't take very many hours with nothing to do but _think_ for him to realize that the thing that was significantly exacerbating his anguish and worry over Danny's condition was being totally and completely besotted with the man.

He had tentatively identified this strange and novel feeling as _falling in love_ and decided that it was really pretty wonderful, except for the bit where the object of his ardor might be dying. Which in turn meant that he probably wasn't as straight as he would have liked to believe, and frankly, that would explain an awful lot about his romantic history. (Nicholas was a great believer in the power of logical deduction to uncover the truth, no matter how disquieting or absurd.) Besides, regardless of whether he was latently homosexual or bisexual or what, it was pretty clear that he was very definitely _Danny_ -sexual, so bugger this whole sexual-identity crisis nonsense for a game of soldiers, because that was the only thing that really mattered anyway.

Thus, by the time Danny regained consciousness, he had nerved himself up to the point of being able to say something about it, to wit: "You can't die on me, Danny. I love you."

Danny's response was to smile weakly, squeeze Angel's hand, croak the word "brilliant", and promptly lapse back into unconsciousness.

A hospital room was not the best of places for conducting a whirlwind secret romance, but they gave it their all, exchanging hidden glances and stealing kisses behind the orderlies' backs. Happily, Danny made a remarkably rapid recovery, and was soon sent home with instructions to take it easy. "No strenuous activity," said Dr. Weatherall, with a look that suggested perhaps they had not managed to be quite as covert as they had thought. So they went home, and were very careful, and took things slow and easy.

At first, anyway.

Danny, it turned out, was rather more excitable than one might expect for a fellow of his size and demeanor, and had become downright _frisky_ as his strength returned. Over the weeks, the third acts of many movies went completely unwatched on first playing, furniture in a variety of rooms was displaced and abused, and Nicholas became quite adept at sewing buttons back onto both their shirts. On such an evening last week, he had acquired a sizeable bruise-mark—a hickey, Americans would call it—just above the collarbone; thankfully it was low enough to be covered by his shirt, and had healed considerably over the weekend.

He was buttoning up a pale blue oxford over it when Officer Bobby rapped on the door and poked his head in. Danny slid to one side to make room. Bobby spent weeks at a time manning the tiny constabulary outpost in nearby Little Kennevale, keeping an eye out for... well, not much, really. Sheep-related troubles, according to what little paperwork Nicholas had seen. PC Walker had been assigned to reconstruct the young officer's records, and while his penmanship was impeccable, he had a penchant for abbreviation that left his writing as cryptic as his speech typically was, if not moreso.

"Hi, Chief," said Bobby.

"We're almost done," said Nicholas.

"I just wanted to return this." He held out a stab vest. "I was in a bit of a hurry when I changed this morning. Must've grabbed yours by mistake."

"Did you?" Angel checked the name tag. Sure enough, it was his. "So you did. I must have been wearing yours, then. I thought it hung a little funny."

"Sorry 'bout that."

"No problem." He shuffled Bobby's vest from the bottom of his pile onto the adjacent section of shelf and put his own vest in its place.

"Sorry about the hand," said Bobby. On Friday, Nicholas had been careless during a training exercise and gotten a severe nipping from Saxon. It wasn't that nasty a bite—pressure and a cold compress had stopped the bleeding in fairly short order—but PC Walker was deeply contrite, and Bobby, being quite close to the older policeman, was undoubtedly concerned on his behalf.

"Oh, it's fine," Angel reassured him. "Tell Bob I know Saxon didn't mean it."

"Naw. Just got a bit excited."

"Exactly."

"Is it healin' up okay?"

"I think so. Tony gave me some salve from his Gran that's supposed to prevent scarring."

"Yup, smelled it," said Bobby, wrinkling his nose. The salve was quite pungent. "Well. See ya." He nodded farewell and closed the door.

"Set to go?" asked Danny, once Angel had changed his shoes and finished tucking in his shirt.

He patted his pockets, checking that he had everything. "Yes. Wait." He turned to Danny and planted a kiss on his lips. It made Danny's ears blush pink in the most gratifying way. "Now I'm ready." He grinned.

Out in the hall, DS Wainwright slouched cross-armed against the wall. "Finally comin' out of the closet, you two?" he asked. DC Cartwright, leaning one-armed behind his partner, paused in the chewing of his gum to smirk at them.

Nicholas looked the pair up and down, then gave them a smile that was almost entirely genuine, with only a tiny bit of extra tooth to it.

"I do believe we're out. It's all yours, fellows." He gestured invitingly to the locker room, then clasped Danny's hand and led him toward the side door. "C'mon, Danny, let's fuck off down to the pub for a drink." A thought struck him. "You know, it was just pride weekend in a lot of places. I bet they'll do free drinks for couples." He looked back at the Andes. "Maybe you two will join us?"

"Cor," said Danny, shaking his head in awe as they left the building. "That was _wicked._ " He let go of Nick's hand once they were outside—some habits die hard—but still walked close to him.

"I've been saving that comeback for _six weeks_ ," said Nicholas with satisfaction. "I knew as soon as I saw where the locker room was set up that one of them was eventually going to make a smart remark about it, so I thought that up and I waited."

"Blam! Verbal ambush."

"I feel kinda bad about teasing them like that, but they do bring it on themselves. Why does Andy have to be such a dickhead all the time?"

"It's not _all_ the time," said Danny.

"Well, no, I suppose not."

"It's a small town, Nicholas. Even with the NWA gone, everyone's got their secrets they like to keep."

"Mmm," he mused, noncommittally. "Did you get a haircut today?" Danny had taken off at lunchtime to drive several large flex-folders of reconstructed expense reports up to Gloucester and exchange them for two reams of blank payroll forms. He'd planned to stop by Virgin Megastore and do some other errands while there.

Danny nodded. "It's not too short on top, is it?"

"No, it's perfect. I like it. It looks really good. Very smart."

"Aw, thanks," said Danny, obviously chuffed. "Guess what else I got!"

"No idea."

"Director's cut of _See You Next Wednesday_ on DVD!"

"Ooo, very nice."

* * *

_8 pm_

Although the Porters were currently imprisoned awaiting trial, the needs of a small town go on, and so The Crown had come under new management. Someone's cousin's brother's something's something—Angel was still no better at keeping track of that sort of thing than when he'd first arrived—had undertaken repairs and reopened it. Today was Monday, which meant the pub would be at its least crowded, and therefore gave a police officer the best odds of getting in a good stretch of off-duty relaxation before some well-meaning civilian spoiled the mood by asking how all the cleanup was going and reminding them of exactly how much of it there still was. Monday also meant Special Mixed Drinks Hour, and the constabulary had dutifully gathered to do their part in helping to restore a sense of normalcy by buying a single round before they switched over to beer.

The drinks were only a pound each, which wasn't so much by way of a promotion as it was an apology. The new barman, Terrence, was still slowly reading his way through _Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide_ , so Iris, who had been the server there for years, had to tell him how to make most of the drinks. Unfortunately, Terrence was a bit hard of hearing and had a tendency to become flustered under pressure. Iris had quickly developed the habit of announcing to people what they were actually getting when she delivered the drinks, since it might bear little resemblance to what they had ordered. Still, it was their pub in their town; where else were they going to go?

It didn't help matters that the repairs had included installation of a jukebox with a vast and eclectic library that was perpetually set on random. At the moment Warren Zevon was singing about walking through the streets of Soho in the rain, but odds were good that before the end of the night they'd get a spot of '80s hair metal, three or four country and/or western tunes, at least two dance hits by young women destined someday to show up on Doctor Who, and possibly some Paganini violin concertos.

None of which would help keep Terrence from grabbing bottles at random if he lost track of where he'd put the Midori.

The usual post-work decompression had begun to set in when Iris arrived with a tray of drinks.

"First off, a Long Island Iced Tea for you," she said, handing the glass to Constable Walker. "All correct and _not_ from mix." There was a brief spate of applause and a couple subdued cheers.

"Now, what else have I got? Gin and grapefruit for you." She set a salt-rimmed glass in front of Officer Bobby. "And here's your vodka cran," she said to Angel, "and a gin-whiskey-orange for the lady. He couldn't find the SoCo, so he made it with Jack instead."

"Oh, that's all right," said Doris. "Sometimes I like it a bit rough." She waggled her eyebrows. Everyone laughed.

"Pair of whiskey sours for the two of you." She set them in front of the Andes. It was neither's favorite drink, but having found something both palatable and reliable, they stuck with it.

"And, um. There's yours. Sorry." She set a goblet filled with murky brown liquid in front of Danny.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Rum and coke with pineapple juice. It got a bit loud by the time we got to yours."

Danny took a pull. "It's not bad, actually."

"You're a sweetheart, Danny Butterman." She gave him a quick kiss on the forehead before she left.

"'Ere, Angle, she's musclin' in on your territory," said Wainwright. "You gonna take 'er down?"

"I hear he's been practicin' his flyin' kick," suggested Cartwright. As always, their teasing was half-friendly and half-aggressive. The events of The Incident had thawed their attitudes toward Angel considerably, but there was still some source of tension he hadn't resolved.

"Aw, he's got nothin' to worry about," said Danny. "I seen Iris try to shoot a gun once. She couldn't hit nothin'. Worse shot than your mum, Andy," he nodded at Cartwright. Before the dig had time to settle in, he moved on. "Hey, I picked up _See You Next Wednesday_ on DVD. You gonna come watch it with us? It's got _time travel_ ," he lilted. Danny knew that was a favorite of Andy's. Danny knew everyone's cinematic tastes.

"Sure, yeah. When?"

"Wednesday, o' course."

"What time—" he broke off as Wainwright leaned over to whisper in his ear. Andy looked faintly annoyed. A brief discussion, or perhaps an argument, ensued between them in a secret shorthand language of facial expression, abbreviated gesture, and barely-verbalized almost-words known only to the two of them.

Cartwright turned back to Danny. "Sorry, can't. We're goin' to Flappers on Wednesday."

"That's all right, you can borrow it."

"Yeah. Thanks."

A lull descended. Angel pondered whether he ought to do something to get the decompression back on track, but just then Tony arrived, to everyone's approval.

"So how was Germany?" asked Doris, after greetings had been exchanged. Sergeant Fisher had just returned from taking his family on a cycling tour of Communist architecture in former East Germany.

"Lovely, lovely. I even brought back a little of it to share." He hefted a pair of paper bags that clinked. "I see you've all already had your first round of the evening, so the second round's on me. A little something I picked up in Magdeburg."

Cheers were voiced, bottles opened, toasts made, and beer drunk.

"What do you think?" asked Tony.

"It's rather bitter," said Angel, "And it has quite an unusual aftertaste. Makes my tongue feel a bit funny."

"It's a very old-fashioned dunkel bock," said Tony. "We ran across a monastery that was doing a special brewing using the same ingredients they would have used back in the 14th century. That aftertaste is the herbs. Very authentic."

"I like it," said Wainwright. He turned out to be the biggest fan of Tony's find, but all agreed that it did a perfectly respectable job of being an alcoholic beverage. There may have been an attempt to sing a traditional German drinking song led by PC Walker, but fortunately there were no witnesses willing to testify.

"So, has anyone been to that new cafe, the Sun & Moon?" Nicholas asked later on, when the conversation lulled again.

Without the members of the NWA voicing quiet disapproval, Talbot Wilson had finally sold his exceedingly quaint and traditional little restaurant near the village green to Enid Lopez (nee Fetherston-Wallace) and retired to the Canary Islands. Enid and her American husband, Carlos, had announced that they had no intention of remodeling, because they "loved the character", but they did rename the place and revise the dishes on offer. It was change of a kind that Angel expected Sandford would be seeing much more of in the future. Though how ready the town was to embrace California-style Mexi-Thai fusion cuisine remained to be seen.

Doris was a case in point. "Ooo, I don't know," she said. "I looked at their menu the other day and I couldn't even pronounce half of it! Seemed a bit adventurous for a simple country girl like me. Though the girl they've got workin' there had nice tits. That should draw some customers." Doris was an equal-opportunity appreciator of pulchritude.

"Give it a try, you might like it," said Andy Cartwright. "Me and Andy went there Friday mornin' for our... for breakfast. It was pretty nice. Good food, a bit private-like."

"Yeah, 'cept they wouldn't let us smoke," said Andy Wainwright. "No smokin' at breakfast? Bloody Californians."

"Addabrrido f'lunchlasweek. Zawrite. Toomushlandro, tho," proclaimed PC Walker.

"The cilantro was fine," countered Bobby. "I thought what I had was quite tasty."

"Yulleetanythin," said Walker, with a dismissive wave. Bobby shrugged in acknowledgment.

Tony spoke up. "It's a bit of a mixed bag, if you ask me. The missus and I had breakfast there last Sunday and I would go so far as to say that it was an absolutely perfect full English breakfast. Just classic. And then we had dinner on Tuesday and it was... well, it wasn't _bad_ , but it was very strange. I could not in good conscience recommend the Panang Curry Tacos to you, though my wife did like her Pad Baja. I guess the moral of the story is, if you're going to the Sun & Moon, go while the sun's up and beware the moon." That elicited a chuckle from the others.

Officer Bobby looked out the window at the oncoming dusk and checked his watch. "Ooo, it's getting late. I'd best be going. Good to talk to you all again."

"Awoggyaback," said Bob Walker. "Nite awl."

It was a Monday, so none of the rest of them stayed very late after that. As he walked home hand-in-hand with Danny, the stars shining bright in the moonless sky, Nicholas reflected on how humdrum and uneventful life had recently become, and how unexpectedly pleasant he found it.

* * *

A week passed, during which time, quite remarkably, nothing whatsoever noteworthy happened to any member of the Sandford police service. Well, except for a screaming row between the Andes when Andy stepped on Andy's sunglasses during their run-in with Paul Wilton's fence-hopping cow, but the less said about that the better. Andy showed up at Andy's place late that night with a replacement pair of shades and a bottle of tequila. They were back to their usual selves the next morning.

* * *

_Wednesday, July 5th  
Late evening_

Since it was a Wednesday evening, Nicholas went over to Danny's to watch movies. Ostensibly.

They were twenty minutes into something dreadful starring Steven Seagal when the back of Danny's finger brushed against the outer curl of Nick's ear. Normally that would make him shiver and start to melt a little, but tonight he was feeling a bit off. He made a noncommital noise in the back of his throat.

"You feelin' all right?" asked Danny.

Angel turned to meet his gaze and sighed. "Not really."

"What's the matter?"

He frowned. "Don't know. I feel sort of... prickly. Listless. Generalized malaise, I suppose."

Danny pressed a wrist against his forehead and _tsk_ ed. "You're feverish." He hauled himself to his feet. "I'll make you up some Lemsip."

Organizationally, Danny's kitchen cupboard was a bit of a disaster, but it was well-stocked. He flicked on the electric kettle and rummaged in a biscuit tin.

"You don't have to," Angel called toward the kitchen. He hugged a throw pillow to his chest. "I'll be fine."

"Shut up," Danny called back, amiably. He reappeared a minute later with a cup of steaming liquid. "Here you are. It's still hot, don't burn your tongue."

Angel glowered at him. "I'm not _that_ pathetic, am I?"

"You are. Lucky for you it's endearing." He patted Nicholas on the head, then dropped to the couch and took up the remote.

"You don't mind taking a rain check on the sex, do you?" asked Nicholas a few minutes later, as Seagal engaged in a series of spinning jump kicks of dubious tactical merit.

"Course not!"

"It's just I could probably manage a bit of snog-and-wank."

Danny paused the movie. "Nick'las, it's _fine_. Really. Don't feel like you need to fool about with me if you're not feeling well."

"Yeah, but... I _like_ fooling about with you. Getting you off makes me happy."

Danny looked at him with an expression of mixed pleasure and puzzlement. "If you say so. But I'm not kissing you. It's unhygenic!" he protested in response to Angel's pout. "Don't they teach you nothin' in the city? If you're coming down with something, I don't want to catch it, too!"

"Might be too late for that."

"Well, just remember that when I'm lyin' ill in bed and you bring me soup, you 'ave to pat me on the head and say 'poor little bunny'."

"Is that what your Mum used to do?"

"No, I just think it'd be funny."

Nicholas chuckled. Danny patted him on the thigh. The movie thundered back to life.

"I _could_ do with a bit of a cuddle," said Nicholas, as Seagal punched an elephant seal.

"C'mere, then." Danny shifted down so Angel could lie with his head resting on Danny's belly, Danny's arm draped protectively over him like a blanket.

He was asleep before the first helicopter exploded.

* * *

_Monday, July 10th  
9:30 pm_

Angel's cottage was exactly as charming as Frank had promised in the call to London, but he still had trouble sleeping there some nights. Especially lately. He was exhausted, but couldn't get to sleep.

He wished Danny were here. He never had trouble shutting down and drifting off with his partner by his side, whether it was on the couch, in his own too-small bed, or on Danny's broken-down futon. But maybe it was better that he was off in Wiltshire for a few days, at a training seminar in anticipation of a try at promotion to Sergeant. Angel had been irritable and snappish today, to the point that when the Andes began joking that it was his "time of the month" and he'd reminded them, rather sharply, that he _was_ Acting Chief Inspector and their superior officer, Sergeant _Turner_ of all people had suggested that perhaps he needed to take the rest of the afternoon off.

He'd brought some paperwork home with him, but an hour of being too tired to focus on it yet too wired to actually relax left him feeling even more off-kilter. Danny had given him a stack of DVDs a foot tall to keep him entertained while he was gone, but none of them could hold his attention for long. He tried to call Danny at dinnertime, but was bounced straight to voice mail. He'd let the battery die on his mobile, like as not.

He wondered if there was something wrong with his endocrine system. After his morning run, he really noticed the smell from his sweat, and he had to shave every day now, despite Danny's protestations that it was unnecessary. And though he didn't _quite_ have few enough hairs on his chest that he could count them, there did seem to be more of them lately. Could hormonal strangeness cause the skin problems, though? He'd had to stop wearing the St. Christopher medal his mother gave him because the chain gave him a rash on his neck. Allergies, maybe?

After dinner the silence and emptiness of his cottage became oppressive. Fuck it, Monday Pub Night was important to the team's morale. He could apologize for being a prick and see if a few pints would help him switch off. And he certainly wasn't going to improve his mood any by sitting at home stewing.

He went, he apologized, he drank, he felt no better. At 9 pm he stumbled home, fairly tipsy but more tired than drunk, performed his evening ablutions (biting his tongue painfully while brushing his teeth), and retired to the bedroom to work on failing to fall asleep instead of failing to relax.

Despite his fatigue, it was a futile endeavor. His joints ached, the July weather was much too hot, something smelled funny in his bedroom, there was an exceedingly annoying high-pitched whine just on the edge of hearing coming from one of the small electronics in the living room, and even the damned moon was too bright, shining into his room like a bloody spotlight.

And he itched _everywhere._

He shucked his pyjamas off and lay naked beneath the single sheet, tossing and turning uncomfortably before throwing it onto the floor as well. Still too hot. He sat up and wobbled under a wave of dizziness. Did he have a fever? He must be sick. That would explain why he felt so strange, why he'd been so cross today. He always got a bit emotional when he was coming down with something.

He noticed that his pulse was elevated and he was panting, breathing shallow and fast. Yes. Sick. He ought to take some pills. The itching was getting worse, a prickly burning sensation like standing under a too-hot shower. It was worst in his legs. The moonlight streaming through the window highlighted his leg-hairs, lighting them up like a pale halo. He leaned forward to scratch, and the tingling spread across his whole body.

Out the window, the moon... it was huge. He turned to look at it.

Something was... definitely... Definitely wrong. The moon was... so bright. So... big. So... _moon._

It seemed to swell, filling his field of vision, its pale light flooding his mind, washing away thought and memory, until it drowned out consciousness itself.

* * *

_Tuesday, July 11th_  
 _4:03 am_

He awoke lying face-down on the floor of the living room, the polished hardwood cool beneath his naked skin. He felt... not well, but better. He was tired, and sore all over, almost like after a really good workout, but the itching and the aching were gone. He pressed a wrist against his forehead. It felt normal, but it would be best to check his temperature anyway.

He made his way creakily to the bathroom and had just found the thermometer when his stomach clenched in sudden cramp. Nausea scrabbled in his guts and he stumbled hunched-over to the toilet, getting the lid up just in time before it all came up. He vomited so hard it made him see stars. _Jesus!_ It was dark and red and chunky and smelled unbelievably foul. Was that... fur? Bits of bone? _What the fuck?_ He felt disoriented, and flushed to get the horror away from him. And then he puked again. And again.

Mercifully, he didn't get the dry heaves. The nausea faded as soon as his stomach was empty. He rinsed out his mouth several times and brushed his teeth. Exhausted, he then dutifully shambled to the kitchen and chugged a pint glass of water. Didn't want to get dehydrated. The back door had come open. He closed it. The clock on the microwave oven said it was 4 in the morning. Normally he would be getting up in another hour and a half. Not today, he suspected. Somehow he made his way back to bed and collapsed into unconsciousness.

He roused himself mid-morning just long enough to call in and let the squad know he wouldn't be in today (because he was sick, not because Danny was back early, thank you very much Sergeant Turner), then went back to sleep again.

When he finally woke up around noon, he felt better than he had in weeks. Had he been working too hard again? He hadn't thought so, but if it took a bout of food poisoning on top of a hangover to make him sleep long enough to really feel rested, maybe he was. He consciously set aside the requisition forms for whiteboards for the new station and spent the day watching badly dubbed _wuxia_ movies.

He drank water with lunch and cranberry juice with dinner, just to keep on good terms with his stomach. It wasn't healthy to drink alone, anyway. He went for a walk after dinner, not a run, and made a point of _not_ keeping an eye out for possible trouble. It was just a casual walk to appreciate the evening summer air. Then he went to bed promptly at 10 pm, before twilight had really begun to fade.

It was when he awakened for the second time naked on the living room floor with the back door wide open that he began to worry that maybe there was something more wrong than simple stress from overwork.

* * *

_Wednesday, July 12th_  
 _9:30 am_

"Anything interesting happen while I was out yesterday?" he asked Tony. He wasn't _really_ worried about what the answer might be. Or so he told himself.

"Oh, not really. Bit of a quarrel between Jason Smith and his missus; Doris took care of it. Bob and I finished transferring the expense numbers for March of '02. Detectives Cartwright and Wainwright spent all day dealing with Dickie Baker's missing goat."

"All day? Did they find it, at least?"

"Oh, yes. That's why it took so long. They'll want to give you an extensive report, if I'm any judge." He pointed a pen at the two CID officers, who had spotted Angel and were homing in on his position.

Indeed, he received quite an earful from the pair. The goat had gone missing sometime Monday night. Mr. Baker had called in a report first thing in the morning, and Tony had asked the detectives to investigate as soon as they slouched into the station. Searching about the Baker farmstead, they had, in complete defiance of Angel's expectations, not only found some suspicious-looking tracks, but followed them to _actually locate the missing goat_. Well, part of the goat. And then another part. And several more, scattered across a sizeable patch of woods. Dickie was satisfied with their report, and suggested that one of the stray dogs known to roam that area had likely gotten to it. The Andes, however, were not content to end the matter there.

The problem, Angel eventually deduced, was not that they were dissatisfied with that explanation, nor, as he'd initially surmised, that they were unhappy with Tony's handling of their assignment to the case. No, it was that they found the carnage of the recovered goat-bits so thoroughly disgusting and offensive that they had to vent about it to their commanding officer. For nearly an hour.

His temper fraying, Angel finally suggested that perhaps they might want to take bereavement leave for the rest of the morning, at which point he was made to feel a thorough shit upon learning that as a child, Andy had had a dearly beloved pet goat. That had vanished one summer night. Likely also the victim of wild dogs.

At least they left him alone after that.

Danny got back from Wiltshire just after lunch. Angel immediately set aside the budget reconciliation and sent himself and his partner out on patrol. They spent a lovely boring afternoon driving around the town, observing absolutely nothing untoward going on.

He made Danny sleep over at his cottage that night. It was Wednesday, after all, and they had movies to watch. He didn't mention his apparent sleepwalking, but made sure to lie on the side of the bed farthest from the door.

He slept soundly, and woke up the next morning right where he'd gone to bed.

* * *

Unfortunately, that first night turned out the be the high point of the month. As days passed into weeks, he was troubled by strange dreams in which he was never quite himself. He had vivid nightmares of running naked through the woods, chasing after deer or fleeing from black-cloaked figures. Cornering Skinner in the greenhouse and tearing his throat out. Being nibbled to death by swans.

Lack of sleep made him moody, sometimes mopey, sometimes manic. Worse, he started noticing things. Strange things. He became convinced that the squirrels in the town were watching him, stalking him. He tried to tell himself it was just his imagination, but then he'd see one hopping along a fence, pacing him. If it wasn't the squirrels, it was the pigeons, circling overhead like tiny, fat, bread-eating vultures.

He couldn't bring himself to tell Danny about the blackouts and sleepwalking. He'd just worry needlessly and feel guilty about being gone when it happened. But he kept a careful eye on how much he drank when they went to the pub. He downed a lot of cranberry juice. His kidneys would be clean as a whistle, at least.

It was clear that Danny sensed there was something wrong. He asked Nicholas whether he was feeling all right more often than he asked whether he wanted something from the shop. Nicholas did his best to keep from snapping at him, but didn't expound on his feelings. It was almost a relief when Danny told him he'd have to miss their movie night on the 9th because he'd be visiting some cousin's boyfriend's university roommate's bastard child's parole officer's _au pair_ 's dance instructor or whatever off in Bristol.

Well, except for that whole dreadful sense of foreboding thing.

* * *

_Tuesday, August 8th  
8:30 pm_

Because it was Andy Wainwright's birthday, Pub Night (which is to say, the night when everyone at the station went to the pub after work intentionally and as a group, rather than the nights when most or all of them ended up there by default) was moved to Tuesday.

Angel had planned not to drink at all, but it was one of those late evenings when the light of the setting sun drenched everything in melted butter and made the whole world feel warm and relaxed. Sitting in the pub with his colleagues, his constabulary, his _comrades_ , he felt better than he had all month, like that light was oozing into his pores and filling his veins. And besides, it would have been awkward not to partake. It was Andy's birthday.

So he had a pint. And another. The light in his blood cooled and turned from soft and cozy to glimmering and prickly, like moonlight on water. He felt... pent-up. Charged. It wasn't a bad feeling, but he was definitely no longer relaxed. He wished Danny were here. He wanted to take him home and _do_ things to him.

He went to the bar to get one last pint. Andy Wainwright clapped him roughly on the shoulder as he passed behind him and settled onto the seat beside him. Without even looking, he could tell who it was by the smell of him, a distinctive blend of stale cigarette smoke, musky sweat beneath Old Spice deodorant, and some god-awful cheap cologne that he spritzed into his pants. Owing to some strange olfactory alchemy, the combination actually smelled all right... if a tad over-enthusiastic in its masculinity.

"Actin' Chief Inspector Nick'larse Angel," said Andy.

Caught by a strangeness in the voice, Nicholas turned to look, and realized it wasn't Andy _Wainwright_ at all, but rather Andy _Cartwright_. His eyes were half-lidded and his breath redolent with alcohol. He was clearly quite drunk.

"Andy."

Cartwright gave him a bellicose look. " _You_ ought t' know this. Amaretto sour." He held up a nearly-empty glass. "Izzat a proper drink for a bloke? Or is it, y'know... poof juice?" He swilled the last of the drink.

Nicholas suppressed a surge of annoyance. "I'm sure I have no idea."

" _Andy,_ " Cartwright shot a heated look across the room, where Detective Wainwright was exaggerating his part in the NWA takedown for the benefit of some young woman from out of town, "sez it's fer girls. And benders." He slammed the glass defiantly onto the bar.

"Well, I'll defer to his expert judgment," said Angel.

"But don't you know? 'Cos you _are_ a bender. You an' Danny. Officers Angled an' Bummerman."

Angel took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Contrary to popular expectation, my relationship with Officer Butterman has not granted me any special insight into the suitability of particular drinks to stereotyped gender or sexual roles. Of course, I haven't received my gay card, yet, either. Maybe it's in that welcome packet I never got, along with the mixed-drinks manual. And my free toaster."

"Where is yer little love-walrus, anyway?"

" _Danny_ ," he gave Andy a warning glare, "has gone home to pack because he's going on holiday tomorrow. You may want to consider going home, too, because it's clear that you've had too much to drink and your judgment is impaired."

"Off on holiday? You two havin' a spat? Lovers' quarrel?"

" _Look!_ " Angel snapped at him. "I don't know _what's_ eating you this evening, but whatever it is, I suggest that you Get. Over. It. Because if you keep this up, you're going to make me very angry. And you won't like it if I get angry. Got it?" That last was very nearly a growl.

Andy blanched, his belligerent posture deflating. "Yeah," he mumbled.

"Good." Angel peered searchingly at him. "You're a good police officer, Andy. You're a real credit to the service when you put your mind to it. Don't go messing it up by forcing me to reprimand you for being an insubordinate and homophobic twat, all right?"

"Sorry, Chief." Andy stared glumly into his empty glass. "Didn't mean it."

"You're forgiven. But do it again and I'll chew your arse off. Officially."

Observing that the two were no longer raising their hackles at one another, Terrence finally approached their end of the bar to take their orders. "What can I gitcher, officers?"

"Pint of lager, please, Terrence."

"'Nother amaretto sour."

Angel abandoned his plan to rejoin the others when Cartwright showed no signs of moving, but just steadily and morosely nursed his drink where he was.

Andy Wainwright's voice abruptly cut across the room, an over-loud punchline to a lewd joke, accompanied by a burst of feminine laughter. Cartwright's expression tightened and he knocked back half his drink in a single swallow.

"Right," said Angel, setting his own glass down. "I think you're done for the evening. C'mon." He helped the mustachioed detective to his feet, and led him stumbling toward the door.

"Any trouble, Chief?" asked Tony as they passed the constabulary's table.

"Not yet, but Officer Cartwright has had a bit much to drink, so I'm going to walk him home before we do."

"Stayovvamurrs. Stiktadrode," advised PC Walker.

"Stay off the moors?" Angel's ability to interpret Bob's accent had improved considerably since his arrival.

"That'll be Moor Lane and Moor Alley," explained Tony. "They've got 'em all torn up, replacing a drainage pipe. If you're goin' to Andy's place, you'll want to stick to East Proctor Road instead, to avoid the mess."

"Good to know." He consulted his mental map of Sandford. It was a little blurry; someone had spilled beer on it. The ink was bleeding. He probably could have done without that third pint after all. "Well. Have a good evening, all. See you in the morning."

He had to take a moment to orient himself when they got outside. It was nearly 9 o'clock, but the late summer sun was only just setting. The sun was in the west, which meant... _that_ way. Right! Off we go!

Cartwright was beginning to weave. Angel draped Andy's arm across his shoulders to steady him. "We'll have to apologize to Andy for leaving his party early, but I think home and to bed is the best place for you."

Andy's expression crumpled, just a little. "'S not fair," he mumbled, as they walked.

"What's not fair?"

"Been at it f'r years, an' iss all..." He shook his head. "An' you. You 'n Danny. Show up, all h'roic. Shootin' th' NWA, blowin' up the station. Few months, an you're... inna locker room. Not inna locker room. Y'know?"

"Uh, no. Sorry. I have no idea what you mean."

They stumbled onward for a bit. "You two do it proper," said Andy, after a while. "Y'know? Don' hafta... get pissed first, or fin' some bird t' share as an excuse. Y' don' care 'bout... wha' people might say. 'Sall okay."

Angel wished that he'd only had the one pint. Or maybe none at all. Some part of his brain was telling him that Andy was saying something significant, but the rest of his brain was distracted. He no longer felt filled with light reflecting off water; now it was a cold, quicksilver buzzing that made his teeth itch and the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He felt like he was being watched. It made him edgy and unfocused. Wait! Was that—no, it was only a garden gnome.

Andy was still talking. Something about somebody not saying something, and what's the big deal, people say things all the time, g'mornin', havva nice day, so's yer mum. Sounded like he was working himself into a state. "Howcome people won' jus' say 'I love you', hunh? What's so hard 'bout that?" he demanded.

Even buzzy and distracted, Angel knew how that one went. "Well, you know. People get scared. They worry about messing it up. Sometimes they're waiting for the other person to say something first." He scanned the darkened house-fronts. What street were they on, anyway? He steered them left at the corner.

Andy blinked owlishly at him. "Never thought of that."

"Where _are_ we?" he asked, exasperated. There were no functioning lights along this stretch of street, and he couldn't read the sign at the corner in the gloaming twilight.

"Moor Lane. Thass Ryan Close over there."

Ah, right. That big open area coming up on the right was Naughton's Field; on the other side, it bordered the car park where they kept the patrol cars.

"Well, bugger. We were supposed to stick to the road." His skin was crawling. There was _definitely_ something watching him. There! By the base of that tree—no, no, just a shadow. Across the field, the edge of the full moon was peeping up over a hilltop.

They walked a bit further, past a side street, and had to detour around several large piles of dirt. They both startled when a cat yowled and hissed at them, then fled.

"Shit!" said Andy.

"Ssh!" Angel hushed him. There was a rustling in the hedge at the edge of the field and a low, sort of moaning-growling noise. "Did you hear that?"

"I heard that," said Andy.

"What was it? D'you think it's a dog?" He could feel his pulse pounding in agitation. Whatever it was, it was starting to piss him off.

"Dunno. Do you see anything?"

The rising moon lit the landscape better by the second, but he still couldn't make anything out.

"No. Keep walking." He kept a hand on Andy's back to steady him. He found the other hand curling and flexing involuntarily. His lip twitched.

The noise of movement kept pace with them. The growling faded, then rose into a long, drawn-out scream.

"Oh shit, what _is_ that?" asked Andy. He walked faster. "It's movin'. It's followin' us!"

"Andy." Angel's voice was rough. There was something welling up inside him. Something predatory. A blue-white fury that make his skin itch and burn. Andy was too close; he needed to be further away. Much further.

"Chief?"

" _Run._ "

The detective stumbled away from him, stepped into a shallow trench, and fell with a clatter into a trash bin.

Angel caught a rush of movement from the corner of his eye, low to the ground. Snarling, he whirled toward it. A cold heat washed over him like a wave. Everything went white.

Somewhere, there was screaming.

* * *

_9:17 pm_

Numbly, Nicholas parked the patrol car at the edge of the gravel lot, killed the lights and the engine, and sat motionless in the dark. The park was washed-out and ghostly in the moonlight. The engine ticked quietly as it cooled, until the only sound was the far-off rustling of rural life.

After long minutes he shook his head woozily and looked around, confused. Had he blacked out again? What was going on? He felt drunk and unfocused. There was a thick layer of felt coating his mind. Trying to remember what had just happened was like biting down on a broken tooth. It hurt, and he couldn't bring himself to bear down on it hard enough to get anywhere. Something with Andy Cartwright. He could recall arguing with him in the pub, and then...

The radio crackled to life.

"Turner, this is Tony. I'm on Moor Lane, near Fitchley Street." He sounded shaken, and was enunciating with the care of someone trying to suppress panic. "We have a... we've got an officer down. Andy's hurt. Call an ambulance. There's... there's quite a bit of blood. No sign of Angel, either. Don't know what happened to him. Inspector Angel, if you're with your car, please report in. Everyone else, keep an eye out for him."

"I'm on it," responded Turner, on duty at the bookshop. "Any idea what happened?"

"I don't know. It looks like he's been mauled by some kind of animal. There's—"

Angel switched the radio off.

He fumbled the door open and stepped out. The gravel was sharp under his bare feet. Tattered sleeves flapped wetly around his wrists. The front of his shirt felt heavy and sticky. For some reason, all the buttons were missing. There was a sickly metallic scent, repellent but strangely familiar.

_Oh, no. Please no._

He touched a hand to his darkened shirt. It was damp and left a dark stain on the tips of his fingers. The pallid moonlight drained all color, but he knew what color it would have been if he could see it: a dark, dark red, browning as it dried. It was blood. It was a _lot_ of blood, soaking his shirt and splattered across his face.

_Oh god no._

It wasn't an animal that had mauled Andy. It was a monster. A monster named Angel.

All the clues came together, just like when he first figured out why Sandford had so many "accidents". The blackouts. Moodiness. Dickie Baker's missing goat. The feeling that he was being _watched_ by squirrels and other animals. Oversensitivity to smells and sounds. The strange pull the moon had for him lately...

It was obvious.

He'd gone mad.

Somewhere along the way, under all the stress, he'd had a psychotic break. Now he was suffering from paranoid delusions and episodes of violence that his conscious mind blacked out. Even in his drunkenness, it all made hideous sense.

In his delusional state, he'd attacked Andy. Killed him. He wanted to believe that Andy would live, that maybe he wasn't fatally injured, but... there was _so_ much blood. He clamped down hard on a memory that rose unbidden to to the surface, trying not to remember the smell of blood, the _taste_ of it hot on his tongue, the feel of flesh tearing and bone crunching, and worst of all, a sense of savage _joy_ permeating the memory. _No, no, oh god, no._

What kind of inhuman monster was he?

Well, that was easy to answer. The kind that had to die.

He didn't _want_ to die, obviously, but how could he live with this? Knowing what he'd done? Knowing that he'd killed a fellow officer—a _friend_ —with his bare hands? _And,_ he tried not to think about it, _his teeth._

And even if Andy lived, what if it happened again? What if next time it was Danny?

He couldn't take the chance.

He knew his mind wasn't working properly, refusing to think about the details of what had happened, circling around the event like a bird, too skittish and afraid to land. There were recent memories it refused to touch. He was also somewhat drunk. But he could still follow the chain of reasoning to its logical conclusion. Cold logic told him there was only one way to be absolutely certain that it never happened again. Only one sure way to protect his fellows.

Nicholas Angel had become a monster. Therefore, Nicholas Angel had to die.

He tried not to think about what it would do to Danny. The important thing was what _wouldn't_ happen to Danny. He wouldn't be attacked by a madman who used to be his partner. He wouldn't die. It might tear a hole in his heart that would never heal, but at least that heart would go on beating.

He walked around to the passenger side of the car and fumbled his pistol from the glove box. It wasn't regulation to keep it there, but he had a fear he couldn't quiet that maybe, just maybe, the NWA had had one more member. He wanted to be ready just in case one more Tom Weaver popped up.

Or a Nicholas Angel, as it turned out.

The pistol was heavy and cold. He stared down the bore of the muzzle, something he'd never been reckless enough to do before. It really didn't look anything like the opening of a Bond film.

He opened his mouth. Then closed it. He couldn't do it. Not like that.

He pressed the barrel up against his sternum. Maybe like that? Not certain enough, though. He shifted it to the left and it nudged against the notebook in his pocket. _Shit._

He pulled the notebook out with trembling fingers. There was a slit in the cover. And through all the pages, in fact. He'd started looking into ways of refilling the paper when it ran out. He swallowed, painfully.

A note. He should leave a note. Let them know they didn't need to search for a killer, at least.

He didn't get any further than "Danny, I love you and I'm sorry," before a tear splatted a fat wet spot onto the page and made it impossible to write any more. It had taken him long minutes to get that far anyway. He closed the notebook and replaced it in his pocket.

He picked the gun back up. The moonlight reflected hypnotically off the chrome.

The crunch of footsteps on gravel snapped him out of the trance. It was Danny, he knew by the sound of the gait. _Be brave,_ he told himself. He knew he wouldn't be able to go through with it if Danny argued with him. It was now or never.

"Nick'las?" Danny called. He hadn't seen his partner yet.

"I'm so sorry, Danny," Nicholas whispered. He pressed the barrel of the gun firmly against his temple.

The last thing he heard before he pulled the trigger was Danny yelling "Don't!"

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Author's note: I swear to you, I'm not such an utter bastard as to _want_ to put a break here**, but LJ _forced_ me to split the story into two posts because of size limits.*** Quickly! Onward to Part 2!

**This is a lie.

***Although I did have to split the original post because of size limits.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_Sometime later_

The return of consciousness came as rather a large surprise.

It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and then another, somewhat longer moment for Nicholas to realize that the reason everything looked sideways was because he was lying on the ground. His jaw hurt and there was a really stunningly good headache going on behind his eyes.

He lay there blinking as something large and dark moved toward him. It resolved itself into a person as it got closer. He took in details—round face, reddened eyes, dark hair, burly frame—but couldn't quite piece them together until it spoke.

"God, you really _are_ a twat sometimes, you know that?"

"Danny?"

"At least you had the sense to get out of the car before you did that. I'd've been _really fucking cross_ with you if I'd had to clean up after that, too."

"Danny—" he wanted to say more, but he couldn't get words to work properly for him. The headache was starting to fade, at least.

"You try something like that again and I'll kill you, I swear. Now," he hauled Nicholas up into a sitting position and leaned him against the bumper of the Astra, "you just sit here and rest up a minute. You're goin' to be okay. And then you can tell me what the fuck you was thinkin'."

"No, no, Danny, no. You have to... have to get away from me. I don't want to hurt you. Please. I killed Andy. I don't... not you, too. No." Words were still sticky and uncooperative, but they were starting to come easier.

"You didn't kill Andy. He got a couple scratches from the badger and then he fell over and cut his forehead open on a rubbish bin. He just needs a few stitches. He'll be fine."

"But... all the blood." He looked down at his gore-soaked shirt. "Danny, I'm _covered_ in _blood._ "

"Well, scalp wounds do bleed pretty heavy, but I'd say most of that is from the badger. It is _not_ going to be fine, I'm sorry to report, because you pretty much tore it to pieces." He sighed. "But I suppose that's its own fault."

"Badger?"

"Andy got jumped by a badger, and you jumped in and saved him from it. You didn't _attack_ Andy, you were _defendin'_ 'im."

"No, that... that doesn't make sense. Danny, something's _happened_ to me. Normal people don't tear animals apart with their bare hands." _And teeth,_ he didn't say. "Even defending someone. I'm not... I'm not _right_ anymore. I think I must have cracked under the strain. I'm a nutter. I'm turning into some kind of monster and I've got to be stopped. I—" He broke off as Danny slapped him, gently, across the cheek.

"Nicholas! You're not a monster. You're..." he took a deep breath and forced himself to look Angel in the eye. "You're a werewolf."

"What?" He searched Danny's face in vain for signs that he was joking. "That's impossible. There's no such thing. That's crazy-talk, and you can't talk crazy at me, it's not allowed. I'm the one who's going mad, not you."

"Nick'las, you _shot_ yourself in the _head_ and you're still _alive_. It's 'cos you've got lycan-trophy, and a reg'lar bullet just won't cut it anymore. How else do you explain that?"

"No, it's—I missed, that's all. The bullet ricocheted off the skull somehow. It happens sometimes. I was just... lucky. Unlucky. I'm not a, a..."

"...werewolf?"

"Stop saying that ridiculous word!"

"Right." Danny hauled him to his feet and pulled him along by the hand. "C'mon." Angel babbled protests to no avail as Danny searched along the edge of the trees until he found a tall plant with purple flowers. "There. You was namin' flowers for me just the other day. What's that one?"

"Monkshood. I don't see what—"

"Also known as?"

"Ah, aconite, I believe. People grow it in their gardens, but it's quite poisonous, you know. This is a public area, we should talk to someone in parks about—

"What's the other name for it?"

"Monkshood?"

"No, the _other_ other name."

"Oh! Uh... alpine wolfsbane?"

"Touch it."

"What?"

Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Danny yanked Angel's hand forward and brushed the back of it against the plant's leaves. It burned, and Angel flinched away.

"Ow!" he exclaimed. A red welt covered the back of his hand, and lines of blisters had formed almost instantly. He looked at Danny, who looked back at him with an expectant expression.

"That doesn't prove anything," he said. He scratched at it, then noticed that his hand felt better if he held it out and let the moonlight wash over it like water, soothing the burning and itching. "It's just an allergic reaction of some kind. It's not—Danny, it can't be. It doesn't make any _sense!_ "

"Oh, _Christ._ All right, if you need proof..." he grimaced. "D'you trust me, Nicholas?"

"Of course I trust you."

"Gimme yer hand."

Nicholas held out his hand. Danny grasped it firmly by the wrist. And then he drew Angel's gun from the small of his back, held it up to the middle of Nicholas's palm, and shot him.

* * *

"EYAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH JESUS FUCK!" screamed Nicholas, and collapsed to his knees.

Before coming to Sandford, having been _stabbed_ in the hand by a man dressed as Father Christmas was the single most painful experience of Nicholas Angel's life. He had had to revisit that conclusion twice during The Unpleasantness: once in the castle, when he really truly believed that Danny was trying to kill him, and once after the sea mine went off, when he really truly feared that Danny might die. He sometimes played a sort of masochistic game with himself where he debated how to rank the events. On the one hand, the stabbing had hurt for the longest, but on the other it was purely physical pain, while the despair he felt when he'd thought Danny had betrayed him was profound and soul-rending, even if short-lived. The long hours of anguish and uncertainty waiting in Buford Abbey Community Hospital usually won out, but it depended on his mood.

All three now took a clear second place to getting _shot_ in the hand, because _wow_ did that hurt.

The pain was literally blinding, causing his vision to blur and grey out for a moment. His breath come in short, shallow pants that made a sort of squeaking, sobbing noise. All he could think was _why?_ _Why?_ _Why had Danny hurt him like this?_ Well, that, and _ow ow ow, ohgod ohgod ohgod._

"Nicholas. Nicholas! Look at it! Look at it, Nicholas!" Danny held Angel's hand up in front of his face, turning his wrist to show him the damage.

On the front of his hand, there was a neat round hole through the center of his palm, about the size of a penny. He could see right through it. The back of his hand... The back of his hand was a horror. The exit wound was a vast red crater, a wrecking-yard of raw, jumbled flesh and shards of white bone and tendon. It was no longer a hand, really. It might have been a hand once, but now it was just... it was just... it was...

...it was _healing._

As he watched, the fragments of bone shifted themselves back into place. Where there were bits missing, they grew back together. Tendons writhed and crawled into position, stretching out to knit their ends together. Blood flowing into the wound gelled and firmed into flesh, filling in the hole. A layer of paleness bloomed across the wet surface like breath frosting a windowpane, quivered once, and became skin. There was a tickling sensation as the few stray hairs on the back of his hand sprouted, right where they had always been, and it was a hand again.

His hand was whole. It didn't hurt. At all. In fact, even the subtle, persistent ache and attendant stiffness from the old stab wound was gone. He opened and closed his fingers, unbelieving.

"How..?" He stared at Danny in confusion.

"I _told_ you. You're a werewolf. Any wound you get, moonlight will heal it. Unless it's from somethin' silver."

Nicholas stared at his hand. Then at the moon. Then at Danny. He tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. That was all right; he wasn't sure what he would have said anyway.

"C'mon," said Danny, hauling him to his feet. "Let's get you home. You're a mess. We'll get you cleaned up, and then you can sleep and make sense of it in the morning."

"I'm a werewolf," said Angel. It wasn't quite a question.

"Yep."

He glanced skyward. "Moon's still up. Won't I...?"

"Not tonight. You changed once already, and healing up like that takes a lot out of you. 'Spect you're feelin' right knackered now that the adrenaline's wearin' off."

Angel nodded wearily. "I didn't kill Andy?"

"Andy's _fine._ He was so piss-drunk he don't even know what happened. Far as anybody knows, you fought the badger off 'im and then got lost while you was chasin' after it to make sure it weren't going to come back. 'Cos that's what you'd do, innit? In the car, now. Try to stay on the blanket so you don't get blood all over the upholstery. 'Less you want to ride in the boot again?"

"Heh." Nicholas smiled weakly and fumbled with the seatbelt while Danny slid into the driver's seat. There was something he wanted to ask, something that was bothering him. "How d'you... know so much... 'bout all this?" he managed to mumble, but the rumble of the road lulled him to sleep before he could hear the answer.

* * *

_Wednesday, August 9th_  
 _5:15 am_

He woke about half an hour before sunrise, feeling remarkably well-rested given the strange and disturbing dreams he'd had the night before. Danny's comforting bulk lay next to him, a softly breathing mountain.

He rolled gently out of bed, careful not to wake his partner, and made his way quietly to the toilet to drain his bladder. While standing there, he caught a whiff of the coppery scent of blood and his eye was drawn to a damp pile of clothing sitting in the bathtub. He looked down at his hands. They were clean, but there was dried blood on his cuticles and under his fingernails.

Oh.

Not a dream.

He spent a while examining his reflection in the mirror. There was a lot of dried blood in his hair and some remnant smudges on his face. No other marks, though. Danny must have carried him in from the car, stripped the blood-sodden tatters of his clothing off him, cleaned him up a bit, and put him to bed.

And then crawled into the bed himself, sleeping next to a werewolf. All night long.

Right, then.

However this worked, Danny obviously understood it better than Nicholas did. And it was clear that he didn't think it was a problem. If Danny still trusted him, could he do any less? He trusted Danny. He would trust himself, too. He just needed to... figure it out. Understand it.

He showered thoroughly and dressed. He wasn't really hungry, but ate a small apple for breakfast on principle. He wrote a note, _"Gone to work, ♥ N"_ , and left it propped-up on the table, next to his pistol. That would reassure Danny when he woke that Nicholas wasn't off doing anything foolish.

On his walk in, he crossed paths with Andy Wainwright, who was trudging wearily toward home. He was wearing his sunglasses, even at this early hour. They both paused, regarding one another.

"Andy going to be all right?" asked Angel.

Wainwright nodded. "Has to wear an eyepatch for a week. Stitches, o' course. Could end up with a wicked-lookin' scar, the lucky bastard. He'll be fine."

"Good. I..." _thought I'd killed him_ "...was worried about him."

Andy took his sunglasses off and peered intently at Angel. His eyes were reddened and moist. "I saw what were left of that badger."

"Ah." Angel cleared his throat. "I—"

And then Andy swept him into a fierce bearhug, squeezing the breath out of him.

It lasted a few crushing seconds before he was released as abruptly as he'd been embraced. Andy sniffed loudly, replaced his sunglasses, and with a sloppy two-fingered salute, resumed walking.

Well. So long as the whole _universe_ had gone mad.

* * *

_Nearly lunchtime_

Sergeant Turner poked his head around the corner of the building into Angel's alley and rang a small bell, twice. Tony had jury-rigged a simple phone system for their temporary building, but no-one had been able to find a cord that would reach out into the alley to Angel's desk, so this was the replacement that the Turners had devised for informing Angel that he had a call, or, if the bell was rung twice, as just now, an intercom page.

(Angel had tried to convince the Turners that they could just speak to him, rather than waiting for him to ding his own bell to indicate his readiness, but quickly determined that it was not a battle worth fighting. He had almost succeeded in bypassing the problem entirely by getting mobiles issued to everyone, but in the time it took him to perform a cost analysis of the available service plans to ensure that they wouldn't be wasting taxpayer monies, Tony had already finished stringing speaker cable throughout the office, and he didn't want to seem unappreciative.)

Startled, Nicholas spasmed, knocking a stack of papers into the air and sending the bell on his desk flying across the alley, where luckily it rang when it hit the far wall. "Yes! What!" he cried, staring wide-eyed at Turner.

"Inspector Angel? This is Sergeant Turner from the front desk."

"Yes! You are. I can see that," he said, briskly.

"You said you wanted me to let you know when Constable Butterman got in. Well, sir, he called around 8 to say that he'd had a bit of a late night, and wouldn't be in until later."

"I'd guessed as much. Especially given that it's now..." he glanced at the corner of his laptop screen. Fortunately, ever since a Starbucks had opened up two doors down, getting a wireless signal in the alley was much easier than getting a telephone. "...half eleven?"

"Yessir. Well, just wanted to let you know, he's in now."

"What? Why didn't you say so?" Angel bolted upright, grabbed a half-full plastic cup with a green straw off his desk, and dashed to the end of the alley. "Thanks!" he clapped Turner's arm as he skidded around him and ran to the door.

"Danny! Danny Danny Danny! I have to talk to you!"

" _There_ you are," said Danny. He looked weary and worried. "You should still be in bed, Nicholas. What are you doin' here?"

"I feel fine. Really. Better than I have in ages!" He took a pull on his drink. "I woke up early, and I came in and finished off some paperwork and now," he glanced furtively side to side, "I've been doing _research!_ " He grabbed Danny's arm and tugged him toward the side door. "Come on!"

"What are you _on?_ " asked Danny, allowing himself to be led, albeit somewhat slowly.

"Nothing! Well, caffeine, I suppose." He took another sip.

"Thought you didn't drink coffee." Danny eyed the distinctive cup with suspicion.

"I don't. Awful stuff. _This_ is a caramel pumpkin spice chai-nilla mochaccino, and it is _amazing._ Here, try it!"

Danny took the proffered cup and sipped as Angel pushed him out into the alley and closed the door behind them. "Gah!" he said. "It's pure sugar!" He surveyed the litter of empty cups on Angel's desk. "How many of these have you _had?_ "

"Um, five, I think. No! Seven!" He snatched the cup back from Danny and sucked down the last dregs. "Doesn't matter, although after today I probably shouldn't be allowed to drink them anymore. I'm relying on you to keep me from becoming a mindless addict. Anyway! Point is, I've been doing research and I think I have some ideas about how this might have happened!"

"You went and bought far too many sugary drinks, and then you drank 'em?"

"No! I mean the..." he checked to make sure no-one could overhear them, "the _lycanthropy._ "

Danny looked trepidatious. "Listen, I know—"

"Nonono! Don't tell me." Angel waved him silent. "This is something—I have to work this out for myself, Danny. I can cope with this, I _can_ , but I have to understand what happened, cause and effect, logical deduction. It's the only way I can wrap my brain around it.

"But I need your help. You remember when we were trying to figure out the conspiracy behind the murders? I came up with all these sound, sensible motivations, and you kept chiming in with these... petty irrelevancies. But you were right! In every instance, you were completely right, and I was completely wrong. About everything. So I need you to tell me what's right and what's wrong, because you understand how things work around here, and I'm still learning. All right?"

"...All right."

"Okay! So!" He whipped out a pad of paper. "I went online and I did some research and I found out some very interesting things about the different ways one can become a werewolf, which I have compiled into," he held the pad up with an eager expression, "a _list_! Now, I know that most of these are wrong, so I'm going to start with the least likely hypothesis. I just need you to help me eliminate the impossible, because, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, once we have done that, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Right?"

"Nicholas," said Danny, "I... I'm _sorry_. I didn't—"

"Listen," interrupted Angel, "you don't have to apologize for last night. You did what you had to do. I'm just glad you understood what was going on and had the presence of mind to figure out how to talk me down." He grabbed Danny's hand and squeezed it. "You're the reason I can handle this. The fact that you _get_ this and you know what's going on... as long as there's that, I can handle it. Whatever we need to do to manage my new... condition, I can do it. I just need to make some sense out of it first." He smiled. "So the first question is, did I become a werewolf because of the circumstances of my birth?"

"What?"

"Well, I was born on the 24th of December during a new moon, which according to some traditions is enough. _Plus_ I have six elder sisters. Although I'm not Portuguese, so I don't know if that should apply. Either way, would that do it?"

"No, course not. Don't be daft."

"Right! I didn't think so. I mean, if that was all it took, we'd have werewolves running around all over the place. _Anybody_ might be a werewolf if that's all it took." Angel decisively crossed off the first three lines on his list.

"Yeah," said Danny, weakly.

"Next one! You know how Saxon bit me, about six weeks ago? Well, it was about then that I must have picked this up, because two weeks later was the full moon, and that must have been my first transformation, though I don't remember any of it. Now, supposedly there's a magic salve that causes a man to transform into a wolf. And Tony gave me a little container of salve from his gran to rub on my hand so it wouldn't scar. And I thought, _what if it was the salve?_ "

"The salve."

Angel nodded.

"You're wonderin' if Tony's gran's salve could've turned you into a werewolf."

He nodded again.

"You're serious."

"Yes! It was kind of oily and smelled _quite pungent._ "

"Tony's gran's special salve is Jergen's hand lotion from the chemist's. She adds tea tree oil to it and gives it away to everybody and their brother cos she's tryin' to get people to come and buy all the damn special shampoos and soaps and shit fillin' up her garage. It's one of those pyramid thingies."

"Aha! See, I figured that. Because it was only a little bit on my hand, not rubbed all over the body as per the legend." He crossed out another item on his list. "Which brings us to... the beer."

"What 'ave you got against beer?" Danny went from looking perplexed to looking perplexed and vaguely offended.

"Hear me out! You remember we had that special beer, the old-style German stuff that Tony got? Well, one of the traditional flavorings that used to be used in German beer is henbane. And the Wikipedia page said that eating henbane is one of the ways you can become a werewolf. And! It also said that Livonian werewolves were initiated by drinking a specially-prepared beer and reciting a particular formula. You remember how we were trying to sing along with PC Walker? _What if we were accidentally saying something in Livonian?_ "

"Nicholas, no. You cannot get it from beer. Or from toilet seats, or whatever. You got bit, all right? You got bit by another werewolf because that's the only way—"

"Gypsy curse!" exclaimed Angel, crossing off a whole series of items on his list that had been circled and linked to one another with little arrows.

Danny paused. "Okay, maybe," he admitted. "What happened, exactly?"

"I had to evict a gypsy family from Mr. Taylor's property. There was an old woman who was quite upset about it, as she made clear in very forceful language."

"Now, when you say 'gypsy', d'you mean proper nomadic Romany folk followin' the traditional ways, or are we talkin' a load of garden-variety drifters in campers?"

Angel looked faintly abashed. "Well, dispatch called them 'gypsies', but I suppose simply 'itinerants' would... probably be a more accurate term."

"And when she cursed you, what did she say? Somethin' in the old tongue? Lots of flowery talk about shadows and souls and wand'rin' evermore? Or was it more like, 'fuck off you bastard, all coppers is scum'?"

"Ah... the latter." He cleared his throat. "She did call me a son of a bitch."

"Nicholas..."

"All right, all right, that's a no." He crossed it off. "I sort of expected that, I just wanted to be sure. Because that means that I _did_ catch it from another werewolf, which implies that there's another werewolf to catch it from, and that's an implication I didn't want to bring up without cause."

"Well, that _is_ the cause, like it or not."

"Right! So now the question is, how was the condition transmitted, and who was in a position, approximately a month and a half ago, to have transmitted it to me? Because whoever it is, that's the werewolf. I have a hypothesis, and I have to warn you, _I think it's someone close_."

"Is it," said Danny, flatly.

"Now, I wasn't attacked, so it must have been by another method. Are you familiar with the legend of the berserker?"

"What?" Danny looked confused.

"Norse legend. Fierce warriors who would transform into bears for battle. Unstoppable killing machines. And they did it by wearing an enchanted shirt. That's where the word comes from: _bar-sark_ means 'bear-shirt'. And some sources say that a werewolf also transforms by wearing an enchanted wolf-skin shirt. Or... _a vest!_ "

Danny just blinked at him.

"Six weeks ago, the day you went to Bristol? I put on my stab vest when I went to go and evict those vagrants. Except that Officer Bobby grabbed the wrong vest that morning. So I must have been wearing _his_ vest instead. And if that's what he uses... I guess the enchantment rubbed off somehow. I know it's hard to believe that it could be a fellow officer, but _I think Bobby is the werewolf!_ "

Danny gave him an impenetrable look. "Bobby."

"Yes!"

"PC Bobby _Saxon."_

"Yes! I know, who would have thought, right?"

"Officer Bobby Saxon what's color-blind and loves to play frisbee and always goes about with Bob Walker when he's here, which is only a couple days out of every month. _That_ Bobby."

"Of course _that_ Bobby! And here's another funny thing. I had a look through the patrol logs, and do you know what I discovered? _He's never here on the full moon!_ "

"No, I expect not," said Danny in a peculiar tone of voice.

"I realize it's just circumstantial evidence, but it all fits. He's the werewolf."

"Nicholas, trust me, I know what it might look like, but Saxon is _not_ a werewolf."

"You don't have to _cover_ for him, Danny. I'm not angry or anything, I just want to figure out what happened."

"I'm not _coverin'_ , I'm just... You really don't know?"

"Know _what_?"

"Saxon's..." he sighed. "Saxon's not a werewolf. He's a... a wolf-wer." Seeing Angel's blank look, he continued. "Wolf what turns into a man. Same thing as a werewolf, just t'other way around. Changes on the new moon 'stead of the full, during the day 'stead of the night, ecksetra."

"Wait. Waitwaitwait. You're telling me that Constable Saxon is only human two days a month and he spends the rest of his time running around as a _wolf?_ "

Danny nodded.

"Then why does he come _here?_ Why would a wolf come in to a police station on his, on his _off-days_ , and pretend to be _policeman_? Police-wolf?" he corrected himself. "Wouldn't a creature like that stick to his usual territory out in the woods, hunting rabbits or whatever it is he hunts? Wolves are social animals, he should have a, a _pack_ of some kind. It's not like he spends all his time... with... _us._ "

He trailed to a halt as the pieces of the puzzle suddenly reassembled themselves into a much simpler picture. A picture labelled simply 'Saxon'. "No..." he said, disbelievingly.

Danny nodded. "Yep."

"But Saxon's an Alsatian, not a wolf!"

"'E's domesticated. Just like most werewolves these days."

"He really... Every new moon?"

Danny nodded.

Angel realized that he was staring with his mouth open and shut it decisively. "So... who else knows about this?"

"Um... everybody. It's... a bit obvious," said Danny. He sounded apologetic.

Angel thought about it for a long moment. "You must all think I'm quite thick," he finally said, quietly.

"Oh, hey, no! C'mon, it's not your fault. You've only been here a few months. And you're from the city. Nobody ever taught you how to think properly 'bout these kinds of thing. Sergeant Popwell never caught on, neither."

"Sergeant Popwell got himself killed by the NWA."

"And you didn't! So you're smarter'n he was, even if you do have some holes in yer education."

"No, it's because I had you. Without you, I would've ended up just as dead, Danny. You and your ketchup."

Danny flushed. "That's not—" he began, but Angel's mind was racing again.

"But wait, wait! That means it _was_ Saxon! He bit me, remember? He even apologized for it!"

"It don't work like that. If you was a dog, maybe, but it don't cross over. To become a werewolf, you hafta be bit by another werewolf."

"Maybe this time it did cross over. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"It wasn't him," Danny insisted.

"But I didn't get bitten by anyone else!"

"Yes, you did!"

"How can you say that? How would you know?"

"I know because I was _there,_ all right?" Danny looked miserable. "I know _exactly_ when and how and where you got bit 'cause I was there with you when it happened. It was on our movie night seven weeks ago, and it was in the kitchen, and you got bit right... _there._ " He laid a finger on the base of Angel's neck, where the trapezius muscle met the top of the shoulder. "I know because I'm the one that bit you."

"What are you _talking_ about? Why would you _bite_ me? What do you mean, in the kitchen? I think I would remember something like that," said Nicholas skeptically.

"It was that time, when we was _in_ the _kitchen_. You know."

"Oh, you mean... oh! _Oh_." He suddenly knew which night Danny was talking about. After their movie, there had been ice cream. With... chocolate sauce. That got all over Danny's fingers, which of course then needed cleaning, and it was a shame to waste chocolate sauce by just washing it off, especially when it was really _good_ chocolate sauce, as this had been, and then someone managed to get a bit of it on his cheek, and one thing had led to another, as it so often did, and... _well._ Suffice it to say that needing to go out and buy a replacement teapot* was not an expense he had regretted _at all._

*Danny knocked the old one off the windowsill and broke it while they were sponging melted ice cream off the counter the next morning, having forgotten to put the carton back in the freezer.

"I'm sorry, Nicholas. I didn't mean to. I was tryin' to be careful, but... you bruise easy. It was just meant to be a love-bite. Just a little mark. And I guess... I must've broken the skin."

"So you're saying that you're...?" His brow furrowed. "No."

"Yes."

"Don't be ridiculous! You're not—"

"I am!"

"But..."

"I'm gonna have to prove it to you, aren't I?"

"Danny, if you're thinking of shooting yourself to try and convince me that you're a werewolf—"

"Tom Weaver already done that for me. He shot me in the gut. With a shotgun. At ten feet. And then he exploded a sea-mine on us. How d'you _think_ I got out of hospital only ten days after all that? I just had to wait for the moon to be full."

"That was luck, that's all." It sounded unconvincing, even to himself. "That gun was an antique, and explosions can be very unpredictable—"

"Nicholas," Danny interrupted him. "Look at me." He locked gazes with Angel. "Are you lookin' at me? Yeah?"

Angel nodded, involuntarily. Something in Danny's voice made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"Keep lookin', all right?" Danny glanced up and down the alley, making sure there was no-one in sight.

And then he turned into a wolf.

* * *

Well, not so much _wolf_ , exactly. More like _dog._ A black labrador retriever, to be exact.

Regardless, Angel promptly fell out of his chair in surprise. Over the course of the last twelve hours, he'd come to grips with the idea, or so he'd thought, but apparently there was still some part of him that wasn't quite convinced until it saw it happen.

The great black beast came bounding over to him. It snurfled his hair and bumped him in the chest with its head, making sure he was all right.

"Danny?"

"Wurf!" said the dog, and licked his face, tail wagging joyously.

"Blah! All right! Get off!" The dog sat, its head at the same level as Angel's, and looked him in the eyes. Its eyes were exactly the same deep brown as Danny's.

"Okay. I believe you. You can change back now."

The dog—no, _Danny_ —barked twice, shook his head, and looked down the alley with a whine. A pair of hoodies were loitering on the sidewalk across the street.

"Oh. Well, I guess we'll just have to take you inside, then." He levered himself to his feet and reached to open the door. He had just placed his hand on the knob when it turned under his grip, and he leapt back with a startled flail.

"'Allo, Chief!" said Doris cheerily as she stepped out into the alley. "I was just—oh, hi, Danny. I see you told 'im finally?"

Danny wurfed once.

"That's good. Past time, _I_ think." She turned back to Angel. "Anyway, Tony was just about t' head out to the shop to pick up some sandwiches for lunch. D'you want anything?"

"Uh. Sure."

"'Ow bout you, luv?"

"Wurf."

"The usual?" asked Doris.

"Wurf!"

"Uh, yeah." He found Danny's head nestled under his hand, and absent-mindedly scritched him behind the ears.

She addressed Danny. "Should I give Mr. Staker a ring and let him know he'll be wanting to meet with Inspector Angel?"

"Arf." Danny nodded decisively.

"Right, then. Ta!" said Doris and popped back through the door.

The fur under Angel's hand stirred and became hair. He looked down and saw Constable Butterman kneeling next to him. "Sorry," he said and lifted his hand off his head.

"S'aright. Feels good. Gimme a hand up." He dusted his knees off. "Convinced?"

"As demonstrations go, that was quite persuasive. Though I would like to know if it was entirely necessary for you to be so... licky."

Danny smiled bashfully. "Been wanting to do that for ages. Find out what you taste like."

"You already know what I taste like."

"'S different. You'll see." Remembering why he had changed in the first place, he sat on the corner of Angel's desk, subdued. "So... there it is. It's my fault. I'm sorry, Nicholas. I didn't mean to." He stared at his hands.

"Hey, hey. Look at me." Nicholas lifted Danny's chin. "You don't have to apologize, Danny. I'm not unhappy about this. It's going to take some getting used to, but... I'll adapt, you know? Especially if I've got you to guide me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "I do have one question, though."

"What's that?"

"Why am I meeting with Mr. Staker?"

"He's the town's druid. He'll help you get control of the change. Make sure you're properly domesticated. That kind of thing."

"Druid. I suppose that would explain the swan... So he knows about this?"

"Well, yeah. He's had some squirrels and other critters keepin' an eye on you since they spotted a new werewolf a month ago. That's how we know it was a badger what attacked Andy."

"And Doris knows, I take it."

"Course she knows. She's the high priestess of the local coven."

"Doris is a witch?"

"Yeah. Well, not like the crystal hippie shit kind. She's a _real_ witch. Tantric sex magic."

"Of course." Angel nodded. "So who else knows?"

"'Bout you? Nobody, yet. We thought we should leave it up to you to decide who to tell. If it turned out to be you that was the new wolf, I mean. We figured it probably was, but we weren't sure 'til last night."

"Hmm. So what about you? Did your Dad know? Is he a—"

"Sweet zombie Jesus, no! Good God! Can you imagine?" Danny shuddered. "No, the only ones who know about me are Doris and Mr. Staker and Saxon and Walker. And I think Sergeant Turner suspects something."

"Which one?"

"Clive, of course. Nigel never notices nothin'."

"So not the Andes, then."

"And be gettin' flea collars on me birthday? No thank you!"

Angel chuckled. "Are there any other werewolves in Sandford?"

"Nope. Just me." Danny looked at Nicholas. "Just _us_ , now."

"Good." He thought for a moment. "Okay, I have another question."

"What's that?"

"I'm not going to feel compelled to start peeing on trees, am I?"

* * *

_9 pm_

Sundown found them knocking on the door of Doris Thatcher's house.

"Look, I recognize that we have to do _something_ about tonight," said Nicholas, "I'm going to change again, we need to manage that situation, and I trust you to handle it. So why won't you just _tell_ me what Doris is going to do for us?"

"Because you'll get all embarrassed and not want to do it," said Danny. "But it's nothin' to be embarrassed about. It's just a bit of fun."

Doris opened the door before he could reply. "Hello boys! Come on in. Hurry up, not long now." She ushered them into the house.

Nicholas cleared his throat. "Doris, before we get started, I just wanted to say thank you. This is... a bit of a situation, and I appreciate your willingness to help me out."

"Oh, it's no problem, luv. I done it for Danny a time or two when he needed some attention, didn't I?"

Danny nodded. "She's really good," he said to Nicholas.

"What are we—" began Nicholas, but Doris interrupted him.

"We better get ready. Dan, be a dear and collect up the toys, would you? Then you can get changed."

"Right-o!" said Danny, and trotted off toward the back of the house.

"Meantime, _you_ ," she patted Angel on the chest, "can go ahead and get stripped off."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Take yer clothes off."

Angel gaped. "Constable Thatcher, I'm not sure what— I mean, I don't— I gather that you've got some... _affinity_ to— Are you really sure that would be entirely appropriate?"

"In _spec_ tor Angle, I'm sure I don't know from 'appropriate'," she crossed her arms, "but if you want to them clothes to still be wearable in about two minutes' time, you'd best get 'em off. 'Cos otherwise, they're gonna shred to bits when you transform."

"Oh." Fighting bashfulness, he hurried to kick off his shoes and unbutton his shirt.

"D'you want a towel to cover up with? Not that I haven't seen most of it in the locker room."

"No, that's all right. You're right, it's silly to be worried about something like that in circumstances like these." He tossed his shirt onto the floor and pulled at the buckle of his belt.

"Good, because I'd like to see the rest of it."

He turned away, blushing, as he stepped out of his trousers. An appreciative noise from Doris made him suddenly wish he hadn't worn the boxers with little handcuffs printed on them today. The thought of handcuffs brought a spike of renewed apprehension. With as much dignity as he could muster while balancing on one foot to pull off a sock, he asked, "What, exactly, are we going to be doing? Danny refused to tell me."

"Chief, trust me. This won't take long. Just an hour or two and we'll have you tired out enough that you won't feel the need to go running off into the woods. And then we'll put you to bed and you'll wake up human again in the morning."

He slid his underpants to the floor and turned to face her, hands strategically figleafed over his groin. "I'm just a bit worried about how this might impact our—"

"Wristwatch?" she interrupted.

"Shit!" He fumbled to undo the strap. He could feel a sort of shimmering sensation in his blood. He was struck by an awareness of Doris's presence, the heat coming off her, the scent of her. "How this might impact our working relationship. There are... standards of... professionalism to consider." The watch finally came free. Realizing his exposure, he tossed it onto the pile and replaced his hands over his crotch.

Doris stepped forward and laid a silencing finger against his lips. She was... very close. "I won't tell anyone. I promise. This is just between us," she whispered, with a sultry smile.

Nicholas swallowed. He opened his mouth to protest, but the shimmering in his blood rose to a singing, and he was overtaken by the transformation. He didn't black out this time, but it did completely consume his consciousness. He came back to himself closer to the ground, on four legs, and fully lupine—or rather, canine. Doris watched him with an enigmatic smile on her face. Danny was there, too, equally and eagerly four-footed.

When he saw what she had planned, he tried to resist, but the moon was bright and the wolf was strong. There was no denying it what it wanted, no matter how much his human mind might howl in protest. It didn't help that Danny joined in, either. It was wrong, so wrong, but it felt so right just to let go and give in to his instincts. Would he be ashamed in the morning? He didn't care.

As it turned out, Danny was absolutely right. It _was_ embarrassing, and had he known what they'd had in mind, he never would have agreed to it.

So it was probably for the best that they'd kept him in the dark, because otherwise he would never have discovered just how much sheer joy was to be found in chasing after a well-thrown tennis ball.

* * *

_Thursday, August 10th_  
 _The Witching Hour_

The meeting with Mr. Staker did not take place, as Nicholas had half-feared, naked, under moonlight, and surrounded by chanting robe-clad villagers in a little circle of standing stones worn down to nubs by centuries of erosion.

For one thing, there were no villagers. It was just the three of them, two werewolves and a druid. Well, plus the swan. And an assortment of small woodland creatures.

And for another, Mr. Staker wearing a crown of oak leaves and a necklace of conkers and holly berries, so he was not, technically speaking, completely naked.

At least Nicholas and Danny were not required to go nude as well. Sorry, 'sky-clad'.

"Are you sure you don't want some woad? It's very stimulating," offered Mr. Staker. He was smeared with the stuff in spiralling zig-zag tribal patterns that highlighted his anatomy in a very distracting way.

"I'm... sure it is," said Nicholas. "Thank you, I'm fine."

"Suit yourself." He handed the bowl to Danny, who dipped a finger in the paste and daubed some small spots on his cheeks.

"Right, let's have a look at you." He held up a large quartz crystal and peered at Angel through it, then at the moon. "Show me your teeth." He also checked Angel's eyes, and the palms of his hands, and behind his ears.

"Doris told me a bit about your condition. Body's been going through some changes?"

"You could say that," responded Nicholas.

"Hair growing in new places?"

"Yesss. All over, really."

"Feeling a bit strange, especially at certain times of the month?"

"Like last night, during the full moon? Obviously."

"Mmm." Staker rubbed his chin, thoughfully. "It could be puberty, but you're a bit old for that. And a bit male to be having a monthly cycle. No, I think... well, there's no easy way to put it. Inspector Angel, I think you've got... lycanthropy."

Nicholas stared open-mouthed at him, stunned. "What?"

"You're a werewolf."

"Yes! I know! Danny explained it to me last night after I unsuccessfully tried to kill myself because I thought I was turning into a monster!"

Mr. Staker looked offended. "Well what do you need me for, then, if you've got it all figured out already?"

"Danny said you could help me get control of the changes. So I won't be a danger to others. I need to know that I'm not going to transform unless I judge that it's safe and I'm not going to hurt someone by doing so."

"Is that all?" Staker shrugged. "That's just a matter of practice."

"Hang on," said Danny. He now had stripes under his eyes and a smiley face drawn on his forehead. In addition, his ears were completely blue. "What about the spells? When I came back from Glasto all furry, you put them spells on me so I wouldn't change by accident."

Staker rolled his eyes. "That's because you were seventeen and lazy, and you refused to practice unless I told you I'd enchanted you into doing it against your will."

"Oh."

He turned back to Angel. "Really, all it takes is a bit of practice. Spend half an hour a day trying to shapeshift, and by next month you'll be able to do it whenever you want. Or not do it when you don't."

"All right, but what about when I'm changed? I need to be..." he searched for the term Danny had used, "domesticated. I refuse to be a menace to the public!"

"Officer Angel," he eyed him up and down. "You may recall a certain incident in Sandford not too long ago. Massive shootout in and around the town square. An inordinate amount of ammunition discharged. Moderate- to high-speed automobile pursuit, also with gunfire. Fisticuffs in the model village. Exploding police station. Ring any bells?"

"Of course," said Angel, jaw set.

"How many people did you kill that day?"

"One."

"One?"

"Tom Weaver."

Mr. Staker quirked an eyebrow.

"He shot Danny, and then I kicked a bin at his head and he stumbled backward into the evidence room and fell on the sea mine, which rolled onto him and exploded."

"And you claim responsibility for that, do you?"

Angel nodded.

"All that shooting and fighting and exploding, all of that, and the best you've got is fourth-order proximal cause on one accidental death?" He shook his head. "Trust me. You're already domesticated."

"Are you sure about that?"

"To be honest, the fact that you're even worried about the issue is generally indicator enough. But yes, I'm sure. Among other things, if you got it from Danny, and it's pretty obvious that you did, no werewolf from that line has gone on a rampage since sometime in the early 1700s. It's a very well-tempered strain."

"And the strange dreams? The moodiness? I don't feel entirely stable, mentally."

"Oh, that's just your mind acclimating to the new form. It typically clears up after the first half-dozen or so shifts."

Angel mulled that over. "All right, but what about the goat?"

"Goat?"

"A month ago, the first time I... changed, I blacked out. I can't remember anything. But the next morning, I felt really sick, and I vomited up something horrible. And we got a report that one of Dickie Baker's goats had gone missing and when I sent the Andes to investigate, they found some bloody remains and complained about it for days. So tell me, Mr. Staker. Did I eat that poor goat?"

"Hmm... I think I would have heard about it. Let me check with my informants." He knelt down and made squeaking noises at the crowd of small and furry things surrounding him.

"When you threw up," asked Danny, "how horrible was it? Did it taste as horrible as this stuff? Because this tastes _really_ awful. Try it." He held the bowl of woad paste up for Nicholas to sample.

"Thank you, Danny, no. I... don't think you're supposed to eat it."

"Should hope not. It's disgusting." His face was now completely blue, and Nicholas couldn't help staring.

"What?" said Danny, self-consciously.

"You look like a smurf."

"Which one?"

"Uh. Danny smurf, I suppose."

"Brilliant! Ooo, I need a hat! Where can we buy a smurf hat?"

Nicholas was saved from having to try to answer this question by Mr. Staker, who stood upright and announced his findings. "Consensus is, no wolves eating goats last full moon. Or dogs, either. You are cleared of capricide."

"What did I eat, then?"

"Probably something dead. Best not to ask. Dogs, you know. Eat all kinds of disgusting things."

"I suppose. But who killed the goat?"

"Oh, that was just some cultists, most likely. We get them up from the Cotswolds now and again. The place is just thick with interdimensional holes, and somebody's always stumbling on some old tome of forgotten lore, starting up a cult, and trying to summon some horror from beyond the vale of sleep or whatnot. We're scheduled to help out the team from Gloucester with a raid next Tuesday night, and that should keep them down for a while. You could come with us if you like."

"Sorry, who's 'us'?"

"The JSTF. Joint Supernatural Task Force. It's based out of Cardiff. Coordinates local druid councils, witch covens, some of the more reliable Fair Folk, whoever we can find to help keep the mortal world safe from bogles, ghoulies, demons, zombie outbreaks, that kind of thing. Sort of an covert network of supernatural SWAT teams."

"And you're a part of this organization?"

"Head of the Sandford division, which is me, Doris, Danny, and whichever of the castle gargoyles aren't hibernating. And the hedgehog, of course, if he's available. He's a busy fellow, though. But we could always use another set of hands. Or claws. If you'd care to join us."

"These kinds of problems, they come up a lot?"

"Often enough. Something every two or three months, on average."

"We had to stop an invasion of lizard people down at Stonehenge just last month," offered Danny. "It was _awesome_."

Angel thought about it. "Well... yeah, I suppose. I mean, of course. That's our job, right? To serve and protect. Nothing that says 'mundane problems only' in the oath."

"Hooray!" Danny clapped his monkey-handed clap of delight.

"Excellent. Welcome aboard!" Mr. Staker shook his hand.

"You know, Sandford is a much, much stranger place than I thought it was when I first arrived," said Nicholas.

"Do you still kinda like it here? Even after all this?" asked Danny.

"Wouldn't trade it for anything."

* * *

_Monday, August 14th_  
 _Afternoon_

The car was new, of course, because both of the old patrol cars had been pretty much wrecked during, and impounded as evidence after, The Unfortunate Incident. (Or, as Danny referred to it, The Unfortunate Except For The Fucking Awesome Car Chase Bit Incident. And All The Shooting.)

The car was new, but it was still, despite all of Constable Butterman's lobbying and a rather impressive set of PowerPoint slides explicating the benefits of increased horsepower and torque ratios, an Astra. That fact that its most common use was serving, as now, as a mobile radar platform made it hard to argue with that decision.

At least it had a fancy new paint job.

There had been no traffic for the last ten minutes.

"So I really did shoot myself in the head," asked Angel.

"Oh yeah. Brains all over the grass."

"Ew."

"Yeah."

There was a pause. "I got better, though. That's pretty cool."

Danny eyed him up and down. "I s'pose."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Still not convinced it all grew back properly."

He gave Danny the vees and a raspberry. Danny just smiled. A car drove by.

"Twenty-nine," said Angel. There was another pause. "You should've taken a picture," he mused.

"Gwauh!" said Danny, "Morbid much?"

"I'm just saying, it would be interesting to see."

"You're insane."

A tractor drove past. "Fifteen?" said Angel, incredulous. "Come on, you can go faster than that! Bloody tractors," he muttered.

A long moment passed in companionable silence before he spoke again. "The one thing I haven't figured out is why my _jaw_ hurt afterwards. You wouldn't think a bullet to the temple would mess up the jawbone, would you?"

Danny cleared his throat. "I, uh, may have punched you. Kinda hard. While you was pretendin' to be a corpse."

Angel raised an eyebrow at him. "Why?"

"I was... pretty upset. Wasn't entirely sure that you'd be able to come back from something like that."

"So in your grief and distress, you punched me in my possibly-dead jaw?"

"Yeh. Sorry."

Angel smiled. "That's kind of sweet, actually."

"You _are_ insane."

"Oh, probably."

Cars failed to speed by them for quite some time. Eventually, Danny spoke.

"So... you're really not angry that I accidentally bit you while we was goin' at it?"

"I'm really not."

"Only one time Doris made me read this 'orrible pamphlet about venerable disease, and it said that kind of thing was really bad for relationships."

Nicholas patted Danny comfortingly on the shoulder. "I feel reasonably certain that the authors of the pamphlet would not have counted lycanthropy as an STI. No matter what we were doing when I got it."

"But you're okay with it."

"You know, I've been thinking about it, and I'm starting to think this may well be the second-best thing that ever happened to me."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, think about it from a professional standpoint. Properly used, we've got a lot of abilities that could greatly improve our effectiveness as law enforcement officers." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Faster running speed in wolf form. Increased strength in hybrid or 'wolfman' form. Greatly improved sense of hearing. And the whole regenerative healing bit is pretty nice. Quite aside from not having to worry about things like sea mines and gunshot wounds to the head, if we ever had to do something like the catacombs beneath the castle again, you wouldn't have to worry about faking it with sleight of hand and a packet of ketchup. Now you could just stab me."

Danny gave him a look that was equal parts appalled and intrigued. "'Meet the cop that can't be stopped'?" he quoted.

"Exactly. And it's cops. Plural." He grinned. "Oh! And sense of smell. Very useful for finding clues."

"Never thought of that. I've just been helpin' out Mr. Staker. Goin' for a run in the woods when the moon is full."

"With these noses, Danny, we're practically walking forensics labs. We can do so much! Especially if we could get some training."

"I don't think they teach werewolf policing classes, Nick'las."

"No, but they do have to train the K-9 units how to detect different materials."

"What, you want to pretend to be a police dog so you can learn how to sniff out drugs?" Danny laughed in disbelief.

"I was thinking _explosives,_ actually."

Danny worked his jaw, at a loss for words. Eventually he settled on an exuberant "Yeah, boyee!" He gazed fondly at Nicholas, clearly debating exactly what degree of appreciative fraternization he might be able to get away with while on duty.

A large van drove past, bass thumping.

"Thirty-two." Technically speeding, but just under what they could reasonably pull someone over for. "Damn!"

"Awright, hang on a mo," said Danny. "If gettin' turned into an unstoppable, ultra-strong, bomb-sniffing, shapeshifting werewolf supercop is the _second_ -best thing that's ever happened to you... what's the _first_ -best thing?"

Nicholas took Danny's hand and gave it a squeeze.

"You are, of course."

Fraternization rules be damned. Some serious dereliction of duty ensued. But nobody drove past anyway while they were distracted, so that was alright.

* * *

_Epilogue_

Danny was exploring the extras on his new Special Collectors' Edition DVD of _The Monster Squad_ when Nicholas entered the front room and tossed something at him. "Catch!" he said, cheerily.

"What's this?" asked Danny, eyeing the object suspiciously. It appeared to be an inch-wide strip of sturdy black nylon, with an eminently practical plastic fastener. A metal tag dangled from it.

"I was passing by the hardware store and Ms. Tanner had put up a sign saying they did custom engraving. And I thought—"

"Whyyy?" His voice had a dangerous edge to it.

"Well, according to a statutory instrument passed in 1992—"

" _No,_ " Danny interrupted, emphatically.

"What do you mean, no?"

"I am _not_ wearin' a _dog_ collar," he huffed.

"Danny, it's the _law_. All dogs have to wear a collar with the owner's name and address on it whilst outdoors."

"I'm not a _dog,_ Nick."

"Yes, you are. And so am I. Two days out of the month, at any rate."

"I'm a _wolf._ "

"We're domesticated. That makes us dogs, not wolves. Maybe you haven't noticed, but you look a whole lot more like a black lab than you do a wolf when you're shifted."

"At least I'm not some kind of... weird long-legged corgi," Danny glared sullenly through his eyebrows.

Nicholas crossed his arms and jutted out his chin. "My research indicates that the breed my canine form most resembles is collie, not corgi, thank you very much."

"You're not fluffy enough to be a collie. You're a corgi. A mutant corgi."

"Danny, I told you, there's a smooth-coated breed of collie that doesn't fluff. And you're just trying to get into an argument because you think I'll forget all about it after we have make-up sex, aren't you?"

Danny stared at his toes.

"...maybe," he finally admitted.

"Why are you being so difficult about this?" Angel walked over to stand next to his partner.

"It's _humiliatin'_." He peered closely at the tag. "What's this? 'Blackie'? 'Property of N. Angel'?!"

"Well, what else should it say? It's not like you can go bail yourself out if you manage to get picked up by the dog warden. That's why mine says 'Property of D. Butterman'."

Danny's eyes flicked up to Angel. "You got one, too?"

"Of course I did. I'm wearing it right now. It's quite comfortable once you get used to it."

"Where is it?" asked Danny, suspiciously. "I don't see it."

"I presume it's gone wherever our clothes go when we shift to canine form. _I_ don't know. It disappeared when I shifted back to human."

Danny thought about that for a longish moment, an unreadable expression on his face. "How'd you get it on in the first place?"

"Hybrid form. I, uh, needed to practice thumbs a bit anyway." It was embarrassing how difficult he found that aspect of shapeshifting.

"So..." Danny paused to wet his lips before starting again. "So you're sayin' we'd be walkin' around wearin' these collars all the time, but nobody would know."

"Well, yeah."

"Both of us. With each others' names on them."

"Kind of romantic, in a way, isn't it? A secret little bond."

Danny shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Danny?"

"Show me." His voice was husky with emotion.

"Show you?"

"Your hybrid form."

Nicholas concentrated for a moment, then shifted. His face lengthened into a snout, teeth and ears growing as pointed as the claws that erupted from his fingers _and thumbs, dammit!_ His body bulked out and hunched forward, shirt and shoes vanishing. He had learned the trick of making his clothes transform instead of shredding, but he kept his trousers, for modesty, even though the added inches of height made them fit more like clamdiggers. And, of course, a glossy pelt, white on his chest and auburn elsewhere, burst forth to cover him from head to toe. In less than a heartbeat, a great shaggy beast stood in the place of the wiry police inspector, looming over the constable on the couch.

Danny ran his fingers through the pale fur on the werewolf's chest, working his way up to the collar—like the one Angel had given Danny, but tan—that had appeared around the thick, muscular neck. He hooked two fingers beneath it and pulled the lupine face close to his own. A wicked grin slowly curved his lips.

"Awright. I think I could get behind this," he purred.

"Rrraigh dha—" Angel's attempt to speak broke off in a cough, and he shifted back to human form. The collar stayed, prevented from vanishing by Danny's hold on it.

Nicholas cleared his throat. "Ahem. Like that, do you?"

"I do." He examined the tag, running his thumb over the names engraved in the metal. "'Laddie'?" He quirked an eyebrow at Nicholas. "I didn't know you were such a _Simpsons_ fan."

Nicholas colored slightly. "It's grown on me. And... I couldn't think of anything else."

Danny barked a laugh and ruffled his hair. "So. Wearin' a collar. That mean you're trained to come when called?"

"Depends on whether my mobile's on vibrate." His eyes glittered. "Are you going to try and teach me to be obedient?"

"Sit, Laddie." Danny pulled Nicholas down onto the couch. He slid sideways as he did it, and Nicholas ended up lying on top of him.

"Stay," he commanded, and pulling once more on the collar, dragged Nicholas down into a kiss. A long, slow, soft kiss, the kind he was so very good at. It ended with a gentle nip at Angel's lower lip.

"Good boy?" asked Nicholas.

"Mmm. Very good. I think you deserve a bone." He waggled his eyebrows in a theoretically-lascivious way.

Nick's lips twitched. "That so?"

"Yeah. Trust me, you'll like it. It's the dog's bollocks."

He stifled a chuckle.

"You'll be _hounding_ me for more."

Snort.

"You filthy bitch."

Unable to hold it in any longer, Nicholas burst into full-blown peals of laughter, collapsing onto Danny, who also dissolved into hilarity, until they were both gasping.

"Ohhh, shit." Nicholas wiped his eyes. "No more puns, or we'll never get around to actually having sex."

"Right. Sorry." A wide grin split Danny's face. "Nick'las?"

"Yes?"

"Guess what position I'm in the mood for tonight."

"Danny!"

_end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: Yes, the dates and times of various moon phases, sunsets, sunrises, and so on are accurate, assuming that the station blew up on May 3rd, 2006, which is, as best I can tell, consistent with the movie. If you ever need solar or lunar ephemerides, have a gander at  
> <http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html>. And don't even ask how much effort went into figuring it all out, because it was a truly retarded amount, especially given how totally and completely unnecessary it was. I am a nutcase. There was a spreadsheet, y'all!
> 
> If you're wondering what drinks everyone ordered on that first pub night:  
> Bob Walker: Long Island Iced Tea  
> Andy Wainwright: Whiskey Sour*  
> Andy Cartwright: Whiskey Sour**  
> Doris Thatcher: Slow Comfortable Screw  
> Nicholas Angel: Cosmopolitan  
> Bobby Saxon: Salty Dog  
> Danny Butterman: Piña Colada
> 
>  
> 
> *Because "whiskey, neat" doesn't count as a 1-quid mixed drink.  
> **Although he wanted an Amaretto Sour.
> 
>  
> 
> Analysis is love!


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